Drilling frenzy reaches Tuscarawas Valley

County recorder offices across the Tuscarawas Valley have been swamped in recent months as the frenzy to tap into oil and natural gas reserves in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations has reached east-central Ohio.

County recorder offices across the Tuscarawas Valley have been swamped in recent months as the frenzy to tap into oil and natural gas reserves in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations has reached east-central Ohio.

Carroll County has recorded 643 oil and natural gas leases so far this year, compared to 495 for 2010. Tuscarawas County has seen a similar increase. So far this year, 279 leases have been recorded, compared to 77 last year. The Harrison County Recorder’s Office has been extremely busy this year, officials said, but had no definite numbers to report.

Carroll County had to make room for title investigators in the hallway outside the Recorder’s Office, which is not big enough to accommodate all those working on leases, according to Commission Tom Wheaton.

“We have 10 to 20 people going through records, and they expect to be here for three more months,” he said.

According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Marcellus Shale is the largest exploration play in the eastern United States.

“Recently, the application of horizontal drilling combined with multistaged hydraulic fracturing to create permeable flow paths from wellbores into shale units has resulted in a drilling boom for the Marcellus in the Appalachian Basin states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, southern New York and eastern Ohio,” ODNR said on its website. “This proven technology also may have application in other shale units, such as the Ordovician-age Utica Shale, which extends across much of the Appalachian Basin region. While limited production has occurred in the Utica up to this point, thickness and widespread geographical extent indicate it also may also have great oil-and-gas potential.”

On Wednesday, the Ohio Senate approved a bill which would allow drilling in parks, forests and other state-owned lands. A similar piece of legislation already has passed the House.

Chesapeake Energy, an Oklahoma-based company, has actively been seeking leases in the Tuscarawas Valley for more than 12 months.

“Chesapeake has high hopes for this emerging shale play in eastern Ohio,” said Keith Fuller, director of corporate development for the company. “We have acquired more than 1.2 million net leasehold acres and believe our leasehold could support the drilling of up to 12,000 wells. Currently, we are very early in an exploratory phase of development and evaluation. We plan to drill wells across a wide area of the play, assess the geology and then will determine the extent and location of future operations.”

To reach oil and gas deposits, the company plans on using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a controversial method that has drawn opposition from environmentalists and some property owners. Across the United States, 55 localities already have passed measures against fracking out of concern for water supplies.

“Hydraulic fracturing is what allows us to safely recover natural gas from the deep shale formations,” Fuller said. “This process is used in nearly every natural gas and oil well drilled in the United States today — regardless of whether the wells are vertical wells or horizontal wells.

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“Hydraulic fracturing has been used by the oil and gas industry since the 1940s, and it came into use in Ohio in the 1950s. According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, about 80,000 wells have been hydraulically fractured in Ohio, and state agencies have not identified a single case of groundwater contamination from the operations. In addition, Chesapeake recycles and reuses the vast majority of produced water, and we do not use wastewater treatment facilities for the produced water. Material that is not recycled is disposed of in government-approved underground injection wells.”